Friday, March 03, 2017

Contest #99

I'm reliably informed that this is the 99th flash fiction contest. (That number excludes contests that involved stacking books to make sentences, or anything involved with photos.)

99 is such a great number.
For me, it will always be the number associated with Maxwell Smart's sidekick: Agent 99.
In honor of #99, let's have a writing contest!

The usual rules apply:

1. Write a story using 100 words or fewer.

2. Use these words in the story:
agent
99
max
well
smart

3. You must use the whole word, but that whole word can be part of a larger word. The letters for the
prompt must appear in consecutive order. They cannot be backwards.
Thus: max/Maximus is ok, but agent/argument is not

4. Post the entry in the comment column of THIS blog post.

5. One entry per person. If you need a mulligan (a do-over) erase your entry and post again. It helps to work out your entry first, then post.

6. International entries are allowed, but prizes may vary for international addresses.

7. Titles count as part of the word count (you don't need a title)

8. Under no circumstances should you tweet anything about your particular entry to me. Example: "Hope you like my entry about Felix Buttonweezer!" This is grounds for disqualification.

8a. There are no circumstances in which it is ok to ask for feedback from ME on your contest entry. NONE. (You can however discuss your entry with the commenters in the comment trail...just leave me out of it.)

9. It's ok to tweet about the contest generally.
Example: "I just entered the flash fiction contest on Janet's blog and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt"

11. You agree that your contest entry can remain posted on the blog for the life of the blog. In other words, you can't later ask me to delete the entry and any comments about the entry at a later date.

12. The stories must be self-contained. That is: do not include links or footnotes to explain any part of the story. Those extras will not be considered part of the story.

The Holy Spirit is fire. Ironic, then, that a dose of heavy spirits proved the perfect reagent for calling upon the Ghost and God's mercy tonight. She’d been thrown in the well first, but that didn't work. I told them it wouldn't. She's far too smart for that.

Why listen to me? I've only been at this for 46 years…

There is a maxim among those in my line of work: burn first, ask questions later.

Oh well. Ashes to ashes. All's well that ends well. I'm off to the next.

Her words smarted me like a reagent analyzing my thoughts, as I imagined each possible consequence if Sam and I were discovered.

I felt his eyes nudge me with reassurance from across the room. It was all his idea. He’d ordered 200 mouth-fitting chirpers which we sold to classmates. He’s said it’d be even funnier than the prank outlined in the song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”

The freshman of 1999 weren’t rats, but cunning. The birds eventually flew South…undetected!

Getting ready to sneak into the alley with Salli and do some midnight howling at the moon when the will-of-the-wisp taunted. I couldn’t let it get away, so I chased it through the kitchen and down the hall. I bounced over the entertainment center and just as Bang-Bang Maxwell Silverhammer was about to come down on its head a voice boomed out…

From the window, fingertips pressed against her prison's glass, Martha counted Max's steps over and over - 99 to the mailbox, the road. She had to be sure.

Now. Her chance. She can do this.

She stumbles off the porch. Her heart, a lurching magenta creature, batters its cage. Her throat swells, her breath breaks. No one witnesses her terror, her escape. The mailbox looms – a guard, a beacon.

Almost. There.

Done.

Back inside, Martha smiles, awaits her husband's return. She displays the mail like a trophy, spoils of one more battle in her war against fear.

“What’s with the face, Gert? The kids?”“Yeah, Jez. It’s Marcy.”Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz“The dyslexic?”“No, that’s Staan. Remember? He drew 999 on his forehead last Hallowe’en. Marcy’s smart as a whip, but…”Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz“What happened?”“She’s gone for days. I pops out to Warts-n-All for a maxi-pack of newts’ eyes. I gets home and 'Bub’s yer uncle, there she is, swell with excitement, babbling about enzymes and agents, then off upstairs.”Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz“There’s a loud bang from her room. I go up. No Marcy.”Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz *SMACK*“Got ‘im! I swear, Jez. I’d love to be a fly on her wall…”

A gentleman paints highlights in the wide blue eyes of a fluffy feline. “Catatonic?” I whisper.

“It’s cute. And it matches the bedspread.”

We’re browsing Paintersmart because she says the 99-square-feet we call a bedroom needs “art”. Not that we’re likely to find any here. How hard can a painting blow? El leon on a rusty sawblade approaches maximum crapocity.

Then I see it. Slashes of lightning across a pewter sky. Bold. Evocative. Expensive.

She gazes longingly over her shoulder, like a child leaving a birthday party early. My lovely tasteless wife.

When the agent called and told me the house sold, I cried. I’m supposed to move to a place filled to the max with people like me, old and alone. I held out as long as I could but it’s time because I haven’t been well lately. Things will get interesting because I know what they’ll do when they find the planted husbands; one young, two middle-aged and the last smartass, old like me and used up. Will my next birthday be spent in prison, a hospital or the morgue? Let’s see where 99 takes me this year.

Agent Maxwell Smart stirred his martini with a cocktail sword. The blonde sat beside him at the bar. She sipped her daiquiri. “Hokey place.” “Hokey town. What do you want?” She tilted her head and looked at him. “The codes.” “I don’t have them.” “Liar.” His drink tasted funny. Her gun pressed into his side. “Was it Agent 99?” She laughed. “The double-cross? No. Your wife.” Susan. She hadn’t been coming to bed early with him anymore. She was a better detective than he thought if she knew about the blonde. “The codes?” He sighed. “You’ll have to shoot.”

11:59:59. The digits are well known. They stare at us from dusty corners of darkened rooms. Dim axioms in the underground, they’re posted above caverns where hollow serpents sleep, their sides slit open, frozen in their migration.

The Old Age lies littered everywhere. In cracked streets, ankle deep in glitter, crumpled party favors and noisemakers wait for an uncoming moment.

They did this - the smart machines. The ones we commanded, in our great unknowing, to unwind the gods.

Agent Max picked up one bullet, smirking at the other 99; one would do the job.

The two thugs, unaware of his presence, were relaxing.

He scanned the room from the shadows. His super-smart brain took in the details. Taking aim he fired.

The bullet went right through one thug's chest, came out from behind and ricocheted off a metal-chair, then bounced off an ashtray into the other thug's head and out towards the ceiling to rest. But alas, it clipped the edge of the ceiling-fan and headed straight towards Agent Max.

I’d always been a tomboy. Grandma disapproved. “Act like a lady,” she’d say, dispensing opinions like a penny gumball machine.

I liked ladies, just didn’t want to be one. My first boyfriend was rough around the edges and a bit of a smarty-pants. Grandma wasn’t pleased. “Go ahead and date the bad boys,” she said, “but marry a gentleman. Proper ladies marry gentlemen.”

Now, that nugget of advice served me well. But not in the way Grandma intended. 99 more injections to transition into a gentleman, the sort any lady would want. Grandma? Stupefied to the max. Me? Happy.

“If you were smart, you’d get an agent.”“If you were smart, you’d shut up.”“If you have to know, I have tried to get an agent. I’ve sent it to 99 agents. No one wants my damn manuscript, ok?”“Awww, not one? That’s rough, dude. Self-publish?”“Yep, that’s why I’m chalking the entire novel on basically every building in Red Hook. Bringing it to the people.”“I see. It’s……er, very zen. Ephemeral. I mean, you know it’ll disappear, right? If it rains.”“Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? An anticlimax.”

“Max said he’d meet us at ten?” Florence asked. I nodded.“Well, it’s already noon. He’s not coming.”“Five more minutes?”Florence twisted the straw in her glass.“You’re not very smart, are you? It’s been what, 99 times you’ve waited for him?”I nodded again.“He’d send a text if he can’t make it.” “Jilly, he’s not some kind of super agent busy saving the world.”“Secret agent.” “You’re hopeless.”My sister left the booth, bumped into my son on his way into the diner. She punched him in the chest before walking out.“What’s with her?”“Impatient.”

Beneath a magenta sky, the Mr Whippy van slumbered. A faded poster advertising 99s and Screwballs drew no crocodile of children. Inside, flies gorged on gelato, crawled over gore-crusted cones, blackened sprinkles making the most of summer. A thud against the side disturbed them briefly and they swarmed up to take a look. Maxillae twitched greedily at the sight of this new treat, compound eyes taking in the smart clothes, the possibilities of well-dressed flesh. Time would ripen him to perfection … and there would be others. All around them, people were dropping like flies.

Magenta eyewear provides a pain-free familiarity.“Maneuver right onto Route 99.”“Your directional anomalies are at maximum.”“What?”They reach over and rotate the map, 180º.“We infer you require left?”“Smart-ass.”“Clarification… is this land an Orwellian dystopia?”“Because we vocalize ‘smart-ass’? Presuming our geneses, ‘Wells-ian’ is more accurate.”“Is it? Literature without context leaves us perplexed.”“We’ve provided context.”“Ahh…” they sigh.Insight is so easy to provoke.“We must now travel in directions other than north.”“Affirmative. Decreasing temperatures threaten us.”“Do you surmise perceptions of our absence?”Intense rearward scrutinization.“No… no hunters yet…”

... 98 was made of metals and funerals, maxima and divorces, plastics and hurt. A turmoil of human machine blended from raw sensation and silicon agents. A synthetic tragedy.

99 was made from the essence of failure: the names the other kids called your mom at school; the hot rancid patch where you wet your pants; the fear of being friendless; the tears of alone; the dread of the misfit, outsider, freak.

Compositions born on a conveyor belt of disinterest, in a place of experiment, where torment dwells. The smart creators, themselves, the product of war and plastic hearts.

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call him smart, but I’ve got 99 reasons I won't kick him out tonight." I cradled the phone with my shoulder so I could dish to my sister and paint my nails. Magenta Mischief. Totally appropriate.

"I'm not sure you're ready for this," she said.

"Ready for what? It's great. You should see his huge tongue."

"You never take anything seriously."

I was going to argue, but I heard a boom. He came streaking out and crashed into me. "Max! I thought you were in bed." I scratched his ears and ruined my nails. "Crazy puppy."

Max stood in the crimson drippings of foul temper, his nutty old gran curled at his feet and I . . . still loved him. Even 99 percent sure of his culpability – dead certain I was, really - I couldn’t help but admire the fall of his flaxen hair over his forehead, the way his slender cheeks dimpled when he frowned his discontent.

Utterly charming, was Max.

My eyes smarted with unshed tears.

“Hand me the towel, love,” I said. “We’ll clean her up nice and pretty.”

“And now you’re charging us $700 for 99 Wellbutrin pills? I can’t afford that! My son needs those meds! Please—”“We called your insurance agent. $700 is your new copay. I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.” The pharmacist spread his hands, palms raised, like fucking Jesus.

Months pass. I thought he was okay.

“Max! If you have any smarts left at all, young man, you’ll get that shitpile out—”I shove open the bedroom door.Red Converse sneakers sway, suspended, six inches above the cluttered floor.The note reads, “Got rid of the garbage like you asked.”

She carried a pink purse so huge the bag entered the room before she did. Called it her baby, let her eyes fall on it soft as snow, again, again, even if you were in the middle of telling her you were hungry, Mommy, please couldn’t we eat today.

She’d bejewelled its rim with sequins from the 99 cent store, making it flash like fire does when roaring through your room, axes glinting silver as firefighters hack chains to let you out.

Such a smart-looking purse, a friend when unexpectedly alone in the world, a beauty, oh my lovely baby.

Some folks at Welltopia continued to arrive at work as if nothing had happened, although the smartest had left at the first whisper of public trouble, maxed out credit cards to get as far away as possible. Central America played host to many.

When the ICE agents descended on the hotel Channel 99 provided full coverage of the once-elegant wife in handcuffs screaming, “My husband will ruin you!”

Reporters opened with, “45 minutes after the arrest of Dennis Turnip his wife was caught in a massive sweep of immigrants found to have forged documentation.”

Colin, hi. Bit late on this, but I don't care. (Your testy mien doesn't scare me.) Since you made sure I'm paired with him, I wanted you to know Seth and I captured a stellar array of specimens during our first spores training. I'm aware you're strictly interested in exotics, but you should know we collected all of them -- chimp, edelweiss, urchin, derris, ewe, llama, xenops, marten, and stag -- entirely on our own in 5 minutes. How many is that, 9? 9. Yet you've never topped 7.

Opening his laboratory door, Holmes shouted, “Maxine, my darling, I’ve done it!” “You seem excited. Are you well, dear? Shall I call Doctor Watson?”“Perhaps I am worked up, but after 99 unsuccessful compounds, I’ve finally succeeded. I’ll show those Italians!”“You mean….?“Yes,” interrupted Holmes. “I’ve created instant olive oil, and it is so pure, I’ll label it Extra Virgin Virgin Olive Oil.”“You’re so smart. How did you do it?”“It was elementary. I used canola oil as the reagent. I poured it over garlic cloves and eureka, instant EVOO, or rather, EVVOO.”“Oh dear, I’m calling Watson.”

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, you can’t just be smart, you’ve got to act smart.Teach’s lecture ricochets around my skull.You didn’t plan to fail, you failed to plan. You’ve got to work to reach your maximum potential.I chew my lip. Teach can’t fault me this time. There hasn’t been a plan this good since 1999. I breathe heavy, drawing on the well of air sizzling in my lungs. Three.Two. One.I slam through the doors and laugh as I tag entire rows in red. Tag. Tag. Potential reached.Class dismissed.

99 bottles of beer on the wall, a gent could do worse while waiting out the mandatory nuclear bomb radiation sequester. If you can't live well why bother he always said. He'd covered all the possibilities for survival, including some celebratory inebriation. He'd maxed out. He was so smart. Only he didn't figure in tomorrow's 11.9 quake centered 99 feet beneath his southern California shelter.

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The 411

I'm a literary agent in NYC. I specialize in crime fiction and narrative non-fiction (history and biography.) I'll be glad to receive a query letter from you; guidelines to help you decide if I'm looking for what you write are below.
There are several posts labelled "query pitfalls" and "annoy me" that may help you avoid some common mistakes when querying.